A player wants to be an ice / dispel-focused caster

[Ipslore the Red]

One of my players would like to play a caster based around cold spells and dispelling. He is relatively new and hasn't developed the concept beyond the theme.

Since I'm lazy and busy with a homebrew campaign, does anyone have any particularly effective or flavorful ideas? There'll be a lot of fire-based encounters, if that helps.

We're discussing attempting to counter [fire] spells with [cold] spells, so if anyone knows if there's any RAW ways to do that it'd be a great help.

[Hayato Ken]

Either go sorcerer with one of the ice related bloodlines or wizard with elemental spell.
Irrisen Ice Mage would be a feat to look at too.

[Foxdie13]

Sorcerer with a bloodline related to cold spells (boreal?).

That way your player will have less spells to deal with, easier because of spontenous caster and easy-to-pick spells (ice and dispels)

[bigrig107]

Ipslore the Red wrote:

One of my players would like to play a caster based around cold spells and dispelling. He is relatively new and hasn't developed the concept beyond the theme.

Since I'm lazy and busy with a homebrew campaign, does anyone have any particularly effective or flavorful ideas? There'll be a lot of fire-based encounters, if that helps.

We're discussing attempting to counter [fire] spells with [cold] spells, so if anyone knows if there's any RAW ways to do that it'd be a great help.

I'm currently playing a Gnome Sorceror 3 (draconic bloodline [white]), Ranger 1 (natural weapon combat style, eventually), and I'm loving it.

I definitely advise Elemental Spell from APG, and the +1 damage from bloodline arcana makes even Ray of frost (1d3+1) a viable option. That's unlimited!

But yeah. His concept is that an "older" white dragon married his Gnome mother, and gave birth to him, before she was slain by a rival dragon.

The ranger levels are partly for favored enemy (undead, we're in an undead-heavy adventure, and the "free" natural weapon feats.

Maybe he wants to try something to this effect?

[SAMAS]

If they really wanna go Ice, I suggest Water Elemental Bloodline, which can Ice any energy spell for free.

[bfobar]

Be a sorcerer and take spell focus abjuration and spell specialization. Also take mages tattoo if it is allowed. The idea is to boost caster level as high as possible (acquire the orange prism ioun stone to help with this). Then when you get dispel magic at level 6, the caster level check should be pretty high for dispelling.

For ice, take boreal, white or silver draconic, or water elemental bloodline (or water primal bloodline) whichever suits your character fancy. Take the rime spell feat and watch bad guys get entangled by the ice spells.

Expect the build to take off slowly since it doesn't get dispel until level 6 and ice spells are hard to come by at low level and have lower damage output. A human burning the favored class option on extra spells will help round out the casting options.

If they are new, avoid wizard as new players never do them right.

[Set]

Ipslore the Red wrote:

One of my players would like to play a caster based around cold spells and dispelling. He is relatively new and hasn't developed the concept beyond the theme.

Since I'm lazy and busy with a homebrew campaign, does anyone have any particularly effective or flavorful ideas? There'll be a lot of fire-based encounters, if that helps.

If he can't find enough cold spells (more of a problem if just using core), you can go the old Forgotten Realms route and have some common spells of other elements refluffed to be cold spells. (Some of the very first Forgotten Realms spells were versions of burning hands called 'Phandal's flame ray' and a cold version called 'freezing fingers.') Chill touch could be easily made into an evocation (cold) spell that has the same effect, but does cold damage instead of negative energy damage, and perhaps Dex damage instead of Str damage.

There are class options that allow energy substitution, and feats that allow energy substitution (in 3.X, at least, but probably also in PF), but you can also introduce versions of spells that were researched to be cold-substituted, so that anyone can use them, even if they don't happen to be that one special class. (Just a few 1st level swap options, like 'freezing fingers' or 'cold touch,' should be fine to get the ball rolling. As the PC gains levels, they can spend cash to research their own arctic version of fireball (fimbulwinter!) or scorching ray (boreal lance!).)

Isplore the Red wrote:

We're discussing attempting to counter [fire] spells with [cold] spells, so if anyone knows if there's any RAW ways to do that it'd be a great help.

None that I know of, but it certainly sounds like something easy enough to work up as a custom feat. Depending on how it balances, you may want to limit it to only count as a dispel magic (and so require a check to succeed), but work automatically if you are willing to use a cold spell 1 or more levels higher than the fire spell to be countered.

[Ipslore the Red]

Thanks for the help, everyone. He's decided to go with a undine water bloodline sorcerer.